The President, Mrs McAleese, expressed confidence in the Stormont talks succeeding during her first official visit to Northern Ireland yesterday. She also repeated her intention to act as a "bridgebuilder" in healing divisions in the North.
The President was given an enthusiastic and warm welcome during her visits yesterday to Belfast and Newry. She said she was heartened by progress in the talks process.
"I think all of us have an intuition that there is a momentum, and I hope and pray it's sustained. And in so far as I can do anything to nurture it, I hope to play a not insignificant part in doing that," she told reporters during a visit to north Belfast.
During a visit to her old school, St Dominic's, on the Falls Road, she met and shook hands with the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams. She also met leading Sinn Fein member and former IRA prisoner, Mr Gerry Kelly, in north Belfast, as well as members of the republican prisoners' group, Saoirse.
Mrs Patricia Thomas, whose son, Thomas, is serving 16 years in the Maze prison, presented her with a harp made by republican prisoners. Mrs Thomas asked the President to intervene on behalf of all paramilitary prisoners, both loyalist and republican. "She acknowledged what I said to her," said Mrs Thomas.
Despite the handshake and her meeting with republican representatives during a very busy day, unionist reaction was muted. It did not trigger anything close to the hostility generated when her predecessor, Mrs Mary Robinson, met the Sinn Fein leader in west Belfast before the first IRA ceasefire.
Notwithstanding unionist misgivings, she was greeted in north Belfast by Ms Ann McVicar, of the Shankill Women's Centre.
In Newry, she met the former chairman of Newry and Mourne Council, Mr Danny Kennedy, of the Ulster Unionist Party.
Her final function last night was attending as guest of honour in Queen's University, Belfast, the 20th anniversary dinner of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies, of which she is a former director.
One absentee was Mr Peter Weir, a solicitor, a member of the UUP's talks team and a university senator. He turned down an invitation to the dinner, saying: "The President knows she's not welcome in Protestant areas of Belfast and I don't see the situation changing."
Mrs McAleese said she hoped at some time to be able to visit unionist or loyalist parts of Northern Ireland, such as the Shankill. While she understood the sensitivities, she loved the two communities in Northern Ireland "with a passion not everybody accepts or understands".
She said she was very moved by the "sheer warmth" of her welcome. Speaking at the cross-community Flax Centre beside her native parish of Ardoyne, she said: "It was important for me to come back here reasonably quickly after my inauguration to get my spiritual batteries recharged in this space where I was born, where I was reared, where so many happy days were lived."
She spoke of the many people from both communities who had suffered terrible pain and loss during the troubles, yet had channelled that pain to try and ensure no one else would suffer. "They took risks across boundaries, they created relationships and friendships, which I hope will be sustained over many generations to come.
"I will work with those who are building bridges to help ensure that, right across this community, and across this land, we do not waken up to the scourge of violence; where we do not waken up to the language of contempt; language that carries hatred in its heart."
